Esquisse Pour Un Portrait De Max Ernst
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Object Label
The soul-crushing experience of imprisonment conjured by Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s etchings is also evoked in this haunting portrait that the Surrealist photographer Hans Bellmer drew of his friend and fellow artist Max Ernst. At the time they were both prisoners at a World War II internment camp for “undesirable foreigners” housed in a brick and tile factory in the South of France. Ernst’s face is rendered in a mosaic of small bricks, alluding to the artists’ incarceration, the brick prison building, and its former product.
Caption
Hans Bellmer German, 1902–1975. Esquisse Pour Un Portrait De Max Ernst, 1939. Graphite and opaque watercolor on wove paper, 4 3/8 x 5 11/16 in. (11.1 x 14.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Purchase gift of the Julian Beck Memorial Fund in memory of Julian Beck, 87.53. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 87.53_bw.jpg)
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Artist
Title
Esquisse Pour Un Portrait De Max Ernst
Date
1939
Medium
Graphite and opaque watercolor on wove paper
Classification
Dimensions
4 3/8 x 5 11/16 in. (11.1 x 14.5 cm)
Signatures
Signed, "H.B." in pencil, lower right
Inscriptions
"193 Hans Bellmer" (signature) in pencil, upper left; verso; "Square up/ S.S. (192)/H.T." upper right in pencil; "Portrait of M.E. by H. Bellmer" in pencil, lower center. Pencil sketch on verso.
Credit Line
Purchase gift of the Julian Beck Memorial Fund in memory of Julian Beck
Accession Number
87.53
Rights
© artist or artist's estate
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